Driving innovations to identify and analyse new alternatives in marketing and distribution of financial products in India

BFSI PRODUCT MARKETING & DISTRIBUTION SUMMIT 2018

The world of financial services is changing in ways that are more dramatic than we would have imagined even five years ago. Inspired by Apple stores and other similar outlets, banks are using smart technology to remodel their branches into smarter retail-like outlets. On the other hand, small retail shops are increasingly equipping themselves to provide a wide range of financial services from opening bank accounts to issuing insurance policies using high-tech handheld devices.

The enhanced communication landscape completely rewrites the ground rules for the distribution of banking, insurance and mutual funds products from the point of view of both the customer - who has increased choice and is empowered by the availability of instant options - and the conduit - in this case, the 'human' channel or the agents. Banks dominate the formal financial system in India, with 70.5% of the total assets of the financial system.

This, as well as other factors related to the development of markets and trust structures in the economy, has meant that universal banks are the dominant providers of financial services to consumers with access to the formal system. Retail banks, serving as customer-facing ends of the delivery channels for their own products as well as partner products like insurance and mutual funds, have stitched together distribution models to suit the needs of their primary consumers, while insurance and asset managers have aggressively grown their presence through physical as well as digital channels. Dramatic changes that are being taken place in the industry. Thus, re-thinking of marketing and distributions models, moving from old school strategies has become a necessity.